


Too Busy Being Yours To Fall

by andymcnope



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Romance Novel Heroine Oliver Queen, just once to get it out of their systems sex trope, prompt fills, stumbling into a relationship trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1467781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andymcnope/pseuds/andymcnope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver and Felicity try-sex-to-get-over-their-feelings fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part 1. ohmypreciousgirl prompted: ”What do you want to do to me?”  
> Part 2. anon prompted: ”Nope, it’s my turn” (bonus request of Felicity on top)  
> Part 3. everylastline prompted: ”Take. This. Off.”  
> Part 4. effie214 prompted: ”I love you…I’ve always loved you.”  
> Part 5. anon prompted: ”Shower or counter?” (bonus fill: rosietwiggs' prompt “You know all those fics with Felicity in green lingerie because it's Oliver's color? Whoops, Oliver secretly HATES green.”)

She didn’t fall in love with Oliver Queen.

(But she did trip a few times, before she got back up and dusted off her knees and went back to the real world.)

 

***

**1.**

The first time, it happens the way Felicity had always expected, a threat defeated and another lurking in the shadows. 

He drives her home after the fight, heavy silence between them. 

Only casualty on their side was her shoe; she rests her bare feet on the dashboard of his car, trying to relax the tension in her lower back and neck (being held captive for six hours is a bitch on one’s posture). It’s probably gross, but Oliver doesn’t say anything.

She thinks back to her captor’s knife and how dull the blade was compared to his words.

When the car slows down, her thoughts slam forward into the present; she opens the door before the car’s even come to a full stop.

“Felicity,” he starts to say, but she keeps walking, barely registering that he’s shutting the car off. The pavement is hard and cold beneath her feet, and she can feel every imperfection as she walks, but her door is only a few feet away. She can make it that far.

He touches her elbow just as she’s unlocking her door. 

Fine,  _trying_  to unlock her door, because she’s shaking too much to actually get it done, like a normal human being who doesn’t get held at knife point or handcuffed to a copper pipe for six hours. She shatters, silently gasping for air; the tears won’t come, but he holds her nonetheless, manages to take the keys from her hand and open the door. 

He leads her to the couch, sits down first and pulls her into him. 

It takes a while before her breathing is back to normal - ten minutes, an hour or two? she’s not sure - and then she’s hyperaware of his hand stroking her back, his fingers teasing the edges of her hair.

(She’d straightened it and pulled it in a ponytail earlier in the day, but the hair tie was lost during her abduction, and the ends are just now starting to curl inwards.)

“We should talk,” he says, jaw set and gritting each word out, because he’s Oliver Queen. She’s fairly sure he’d prefer going back to the island over  _talking things out_ , but she’s touched nonetheless.

“I just—” She starts to say but the words get stuck in her throat. She can’t have this conversation right now, not sitting on his lap while his hand strokes her back. “I need a shower,” she says instead, propelling herself forward and out of his reach - for now.

Under the warm water, she thinks about her captor’s words, remembers the look in Oliver’s eyes. She’s gotten incredibly good at convincing herself things between them would never happen -  _could_  never happen.

She’s not sure if some people can just see through her better than she can, or if they’re just making assumptions based on social norms. A lot of it has to do with proximity, she knows - she’s always next to Oliver, always trying to hold his lives together seamlessly with both her hands, but some of it is spilling over and they can’t afford that.

The truth remains that Diggle is doing the same in his own way, yet he’s never been kidnapped and held because of what he means to Oliver Queen. Whatever feelings she’s hiding deep down are becoming a liability. 

When she comes out of the shower after scrubbing the soles of her feet for a good ten minutes, she expects to find him gone. Instead, he’s still in the living room where she’d left him, sitting in the dim lighting, with his leather jacket discarded. His arms are spread over the back of the couch, gray cotton t-shirt doing nothing to conceal the muscles of his torso and shoulders.

“There you are,” he says as he rubs at his eyes.

“Sorry,” she replies, mostly unconsciously. She does that all the time, apologize for things she’s not guilty of, but it’s just her nature. Her hair is dripping onto her t-shirt and pajamas pants, but she ignores it as she sits down on the coffee table in front of him.

“How are you feeling?” He asks as he leans forward, his hand rubbing her knee through cotton.

“I’m… fine,” she lies. “You can go now.” She notices a moment too late what her words sound like, but she’s not in the mood to clarify her meaning (or to make it worse, like she usually does).

“I will, once I’m sure you’re okay,” he explains, either not picking up on the fact she just tried kicking him out or not caring. “Talking, remember?”

She sighs, lungs hurting with the effort. “Do you remember Russia— or, I should say, the conversation after Russia? It’s fine if you don’t, I don’t expect—”

He cuts her off. “I remember.”

“I think you’re still right,” she explains. “This… is too dangerous, as proven by today’s events. I need— we need some distance.”

“Felicity…” He breathes her name like a supplication. “I can’t do this without you.”

She shakes her head, droplets of water flying everywhere. “No, I don’t mean it like that. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not following you,” he says as he reaches over to wipe a stray droplet from her cheekbone with his thumb.

Her heart jumps to her throat, and she can’t breathe until he pulls back, her skin burning where he touched her.

“Dr. Quinn’s  _associate,_  he— I know we’ve got this unspoken thing going, and I’m really fine with leaving it unspoken,” she explains, glancing down at her pajama pants so she doesn’t have to make eye contact with him. “But other people, they’re picking up on it, and it’s putting the two of us in danger, not to mention everyone around us.”

He exhales a breath he’d been holding, his hand tightening on her knee.

“I’m not… god, words are difficult right now. But you were right, after Russia. Yet we need to address the elephant in the room, before it gets us killed.”

“Still not following you,” he repeats, his tone sounding half exasperated like he gets when she’s talking about code or babbling about the news.

“Once,” she manages to get out, her throat catching around the letters. “A get-it-out-of-our-system thing.”

He pulls his hand off her knee, lightning fast, and it threatens to destroy her. But when she makes eye contact with him again, his pupils are dilated, his jaw is locked and his lips are parted.  _Shock_ \- he looks absolutely shocked at her words.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he finally manages to say, his voice in this weird pitch she’s never heard before.

She tilts her head, sliding forward until their knees are touching. “Since when has that stopped you?” 

The first kiss is desperate, neither sure who initiated it, and then he’s pulling her into his lap again, her knees digging into the cushions on either side of his hips.

(It’s like the dam has burst, pent-up desire flooding their bodies in one swift and destructive move.)

Her clothes get discarded first, his hand wrapping into her damp hair and tugging until she lets her head loll back; his lips trace a path down her neck, his other hand behind her back getting her to arch upwards until his mouth can encompass her stiff nipple. His tongue paints circles around it, sucks until it’s even puffier than it was before, and then he repeats the action on the other nipple.

She presses her hip into his, feeling the ridge of his length against her. He lets go of her hair to move his hand to her core, fills her with two digits and lets her grind against his hand until she comes.

“What do you want?” She asks as she comes back down. “Tell me,” she orders because this is their chance.

“I’d rather show you,” he says, standing up with her wrapped around him. “Where’s your bedroom?”

She guides them there.


	2. Chapter 2

He stuck to her rule of not discussing what happened that night.

She’d been right about one thing - it  _had_  helped take the edge off, at least temporarily. 

(It reminds him of when they’d go weeks without finding good game to eat on the island, and when they’d finally get a good meal of wild rabbit and fish, he’d gorge himself on it. He’d  _always_  get sick after, but a few weeks later he’d be craving it again.)

He watches her as he works out, wonders if the craving will have gone away again by the time he’d done with this rep set. He misses Sara, for more reasons than he can count, but part of him is relieved she’s not here, smirking about his downfall.

“I admit it, I’m officially bored,” Felicity says to no one in particular as she pushes away from her workstation. She’s wearing a summer dress with a halter top, obviously feeling more optimistic about the weather than most of the population.

“There has to be  _some_  crime happening,” he points out, dropping from the pipe he’d been using for upside-down crunches.

“Last five calls on the police scanner turned out to be duds,” she adds with a sigh, removing her heels and leaning back on the computer chair. “I just wish criminals and villains could stick to a schedule and coordinate their activities. Is that too much to ask? I’m not sure if Diggle picked the best or the worst week to go on his vacation with Lyla.”

She lets her head fall forward, chin sitting on top of her sternum, her hands reaching behind her neck to rub the muscles there. The memory flash he has of cupping the area with his hand while her mouth wrapped around him is almost too much to bear, and he’s glad he’s no longer ten feet off the ground or he might’ve fallen.

Before he knows it, he’s standing behind the chair, his hands moving hers away before he takes over.

(He doesn’t miss the way she tenses when his skin touches hers, or the way she relaxes after a quick count to three.)

She hums with contentment as his fingers dig into the muscles, relaxes even further as he massages her shoulders. “Wow, you’re good at this,” she adds breathily. “Not that you don’t already have enough on your plate, but if you ever need yet another job, this would definitely be a career you should consider. Hands of gold, I’m telling you.”

He lets this amused breath out of his chest, not quite a chuckle but halfway there.

“I didn’t mean— shut up,” she tells him, tensing under his fingers.

“I didn’t say anything,” he points out, rubbing at a particular knot behind her shoulder blade.

“Ohhhh,” she moans at his ministrations, the sound going straight to his head before rushing south, along with most of his blood flow.

He decides to test the waters a bit. “You know, you never did tell me what  _you_  wanted.”

“What I— oh.” Her voice sounds distant, like she’s not here anymore but back in her bed all those weeks ago.

“I was just thinking,” he explains, “I never got to hear what you wanted. I was thinking you didn’t exactly have  _your_  once.”

His hands trace the edge of her dress, brush over her skin around to her sides, following the bones of her ribs and stopping just before the softer than soft skin on the outside of her breasts.

“So it’s my turn?” She asks, voice like gravel and a deep blush reaching even her shoulders; he can’t see her face, but he imagines it’s a darker shade of pink, her bottom lip caught firmly between her teeth.

“Yeah, it’s your turn,” he agrees, and truthfully he hasn’t exactly thought this plan through - which is his M.O., actually - but he’s heavily invested in the fact she’s not pulling away from his touch.

Not ten minutes later, her fingers are wrapped in his hair, his mouth and chin and nose slick with her, her thighs wrapped so tightly around his head, he’s fairly sure he could pass out at any minute. She tastes human and sharp in a way that cuts something deep inside him; he could spend eternity trying to explain it, but most importantly he wants to spend an eternity doing this to her.

He doesn’t pass out, but even as she pushes him down onto her chair and slides down his length, he still finds himself not entirely out of danger.

She grips the tendons on his neck as she rides him, chokes on her own breath during a couple of thrusts and he files it away in his memory for later - chiding himself for even thinking the would be a  _later_  when he should be enjoying the present. But he can’t help but catalogue the way her nails dig into his skin when he sucks on a spot on her neck, or how she gets oversensitive after each orgasm, pushing his hand away for a good three minutes before she’s pulling it back to between her legs.

 


	3. Chapter 3

There’s no conversation or weak excuse for the third time. 

She wants it, and he wants it. That’s about the extent of it.

( _Needs_  it, something inside corrects her, and she ignores it.)

“I can’t—” he complains as he lets go of her top, the gauzy fabric criss-crossing over her chest, held up by tiny buttons on her shoulders; tiny buttons that appear to be Oliver Queen’s undoing, the one evil he can’t face. The thought amuses her far too much, something akin to mirth bubbling inside her chest. “Get it off.”

“I got it,” she says, pulling it apart and letting it pool around her middle. His hands instantly cradle her freed breasts, this hunger in his gaze that she can’t quite read.

He’s making a liar out of her again, which is becoming quite a habit she doesn’t quite care to break. 

( _Once_ is quickly getting to the same level as  _just until Walter’s found_  and  _I do_ not _like Oliver._ )

It’s more hurried than their second time together, but less desperate than their first. 

He nearly collapses on top of her when he comes, his hands gripping the back of her neck so tightly, she barely manages to roll away using a move Sara taught her.

She curses Sara, because if she’d stayed in town, this probably wouldn’t be happening. Then again, it might, but at least she’d be able to ask Sara for advice, since last time she tried to go to Diggle with  _“Hypothetically, if I’d slept with a… co-worker… twice, and wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with the fallout—”_ he’d just held up a hand and walked away, shaking his head. He’d also spent the better part of the following week staring daggers at Oliver.

Oliver finally finds the strength to get up and head into her tiny bathroom - that’s not true, her bathroom is average-sized, he just manages to make everything around her seem small, like he’s taking up all the room everywhere. (Her mind, her heart, her life.)

He comes out of the bathroom stark naked and unashamed; she knows what’s coming, awkward silence while he puts clothes back on, a self-deprecating joke from either of them before they part.

With no regard for her visualization of the next twenty minutes, he plops back down on her bed, trailing kisses all over her stomach. The skin turns pink everywhere, right before he pushes her legs apart, licks a long stripe between her thighs.

She wonders if he can taste the artificial lubricated latex from before; he keeps licking and doesn’t stop after the first time she comes nor the second. Her limbs feel heavy when she tugs him upwards, kisses him long and hard and everything tastes like them, smells like them.

He reaches in her nightstand drawer again, grabs what he’s looking for before he settles on his side, pulling her back towards him. She angles her hips blindly until she feels the tip at her entrance. 

They move together with no rush and no clear intent. (It’s possible that applies to more than just this moment.)

He places his hand low on her stomach, thrusts towards it - it makes him hit this spot she didn’t know was there; it feels deeper and better than almost everything and everyone else, and she tumbles over the edge with that thought, barely registering that he’s following her.

When she wakes up the next morning, his hands are wrapped around her.


	4. Chapter 4

He remembers Tommy after each breakup, getting drunk at a club and lamenting the fact he had no idea what had gone wrong.

Oliver doesn’t have that luxury; he knows exactly what has gone wrong each time. (Him.)

Some may call it cowardice (Diggle… Diggle calls it cowardice) but he’s not looking forward to inevitably fucking things up with Felicity; that thought is the main thing that keeps him from going to her every night.

Other things that keep him from going to Felicity: the memories of Shado’s body hitting the ground, Laurel’s face during Tommy’s funeral, and the first time he watched Sara kill a man.

So he keeps his mouth shut and keeps his hood up, patrols until his feet hurt and his knees hurt from the running and landing. When he can’t take it anymore, he goes back to the foundry (she’s always gone by then) and works out his upper body until he’s ready to collapse from exhaustion.

“You look like shit,” Thea tells him when they’re out to lunch, hot dogs at the park like when they were kids. (Moira Queen never liked street vendors, so Oliver would take Thea out as an act of rebellion.)

“Thanks,” he replies, feigning offense.

“I’m serious, you look worse than you did, you know… after,” she says.  _After_ is Thea-code for those weeks after he came home, when he thought he was doing a good job pretending.

“Just having trouble sleeping,” he admits. “Nothing— nothing like before,” he quickly explains, not wanting to worry her. It’s not nightmares keeping him up these days.

“Ah,” Thea says, before taking a huge bite of her hot dog. The food is carefully chewed and swallowed, some manners deeply ingrained in the two of them, before she adds: “I see.”

He shrugs. “There’s nothing to see.”

“Is it Sara?” Thea asks, bumping into him as they walk and almost knocking his untouched hot dog. “Or is it Laurel?”

“It’s no one,” he lies. “Eat your hot dog, Speedy.”

“You’re a shit liar,” Thea says before she obeys him, chewing the rest of her hot dog and sipping from his drink.

He doesn’t really bother to correct her assumption.

*

He has problems remembering those months after the island; memories get out of order, entire days missing. But he does remember going to Felicity in her old cubicle, and leaving there feeling  _something_  different - puzzled. He’d felt puzzled, as if she were a mystery he could try solving, gathering small bits of information at a time, trying to form this complex person out of random trivia and a background check.

Knowing more about her hasn’t shed any extra light; like the fact she snores but only if she’s on her back, and that she’s extra ticklish if you touch behind her knee. Those pieces of information offer him very little insight, but they end up being what unravels him.

He knows love - not the idealist version from the books, but the messy and fluid version from real life. He’s loved before: poorly and messily at first, desperately and intensely on the island, hesitantly and cyclically when he got back to Starling City. Each time, it’s threatened to consume him; he is used to that feeling. 

What he’s not used to: listening to his brain over his instincts or his heart - but Felicity deserves this at least.

He fights it for the longest time; it’s not as difficult at first, just forcing himself to pull back from each touch, to keep some words from flowing out of him. It becomes increasingly harder as time passes; his touches linger, her body language changes, familiarity sets in. By the time he gets to touch her for a full night, he doesn’t quite care how difficult it is, or how there’s a time limit on them; he’s greedy and desperate.

It only gets worse after that, now that his mind has sense memory of what it’s like to hold her the way he’s wanted to before. But still, other than the occasional relapses they have, he keeps it together. (Well, that and the sleepless nights, working his body to the point of exhaustion because he won’t allow himself this.)

Until: “Got him. God, I love you,” he blurts over comms as he finishes tying their target to the fence.

Everything goes eerily quiet in his ear as he waits for the cops in the shadow; she just got him the location of the guy, using god knows what technology, insane accuracy and efficacy; doing what he’d failed to do for days on his own.

The irony is that he’s thrown himself in this case to keep from doing exactly what he just did.

(He’s not entirely sure this is the right definition of irony or not, faint memory of Felicity babbling about Alanis Morissette and grammar, but he can’t quite ask her now.)

“Did he just—” Roy’s voice gets cut from the comms, too coincidental to be an accident.

The cops come and go, and he heads back to the foundry, expecting to find it empty again; instead, he finds her leaning against the metal table of her workstation, worrying at her nails with her teeth.

“Diggle?” He asks as he puts his bow in its case. Continues to remove the suit, because there’s no point in modesty anymore.

“Ran home the moment I assured him I’d be okay on my own,” she informs him. Her nail polish is chipped on the ends, something he hasn’t seen before, and it hurts something awful.

“I’m sorry,” he says as he removes the jacket and the hood.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she points out. “I say that all the time, you know. I said it to Roy three weeks ago when he got rid of yet another rat by the training mats. We really should call pest control, which I know we can’t exactly do because  _secret_  lair and whatnot.”

She’s giving him an out. If he were a smarter - or less self-destructive - man, he’d take it.

He stands in front of her in just boots and dark green leather pants. “I meant it.”

She shakes her hand, sets both hands on the edge of the desk. “Meant  _what_  exactly? You love my hacking skills, in a friend-slash-partner way? Or the way I can’t seem to shut  _up_?”

Her lipstick is still going strong at 11p.m., and he wants to rub it all off, wants to see the natural color of her lips - almost as much as he wants to see them swollen, a dark shade of pink that matches her nipples after extended stimuli. Wants to see her in the morning, sunlight streaming through the windows and snoozing her alarm. “All of it.”

She nods, moves her arms in front of her and crosses them. “So friend way?”

“That too,” he concedes. “But not _just_ that.”

He leans his forehead against hers, breathing the air around them until he can feel her in his lungs. 

“I mean all of you, even the parts that drive me insane sometimes,” he explains. “Like the part that came up with this asinine plan, because I can’t get you out of my system with just once or twice. I’m convinced I could spend a lifetime with you and not. get. enough.” He punctuates every word with a kiss, licking his way deep into her mouth after the last kiss, until she’s moaning into his lips.

“This is a really bad idea,” she argues as he lifts her onto the desk, hands finding their way under her skirt and pulling her underwear down her legs.

“It’s never stopped me before,” he paraphrases her words back to her.


	5. Chapter 5

One thing she didn’t count on in all of her fantasies - how much she would enjoy teasing him.

There is this new smile he has now, an expression that’s a threat and a promise all rolled into one, and he’s been using it all night during the gala.

(It hasn’t been all smiles. She’d spent so long keeping herself from feeling that it was an adjustment to let the floodgates open. And Oliver had his own set of issues to deal with, probably entire volumes in alphabetical order.)

They’ve settled into their relationship now, his hand tracing absentminded circles on her back through her dress. He pretends to sip from the same champagne flute all night, making small talk with the imposing figures around them.

Thea steals her away a couple of times, teaches her all the tricks to get through the night without losing her mind; toupee-bingo becomes her favorite.

Oliver drives home, his hand finding her nylon-clad knee under her dress during the journey. The streets are deserted, miles between properties in this area of town, so she lets him trace patterns on her skin. He pauses when he finds the clasp of the garter, readjusts in his seat and mutters something about five-speed manual cars and steps on the gas just a little more.

They stumble through the side door after parking in her garage, her hands tugging desperately on his suspenders and he hisses. “Shit, sorry,” she says, remembering the bruise on his shoulder. It’s two days old, from the latest case they worked, the skin an angry blue and purple last time she saw it.

“It’s fine,” he assures her, sliding the suspenders down and unbuttoning his shirt. When she pushes it slightly out of the way - carefully this time - the bruise has changed colors, green and yellow and fading. Her fingers trace the edges carefully, almost reverently. 

They have to walk through the kitchen from this side of the house to get to the living room and bedroom, but he stops and pushes her against the wall of the utility room, right by the kitchen.

“I need a shower, this much hairspray is making me lightheaded,” she informs him even as he’s pushing the hem of her dress up.

“Later,” he argues, before kissing her. “Need you now.”

Heat pools in her center at his words, and his hand cups her through the fabric of her underwear; her knees buckle, the contacts bother her when she squeezes her eyes shut. The room smells like laundry softener, the washer and dryer just four feet away, and she clasps her hands on his shoulder, forgetting about the bruise again until he hisses.

“Sorry, sorry, god!” 

He laughs and grabs both her wrists in his hands, moves them way up above her head until it’s almost a stretch. His hand between her legs slips past her underwear, cupping her length with his bare fingers; they’re cold at first, but as he moves them back and forth, they’re coated in her warm slickness, human warm and reassuring against her.

He gets her off like this the first time, holds her hands up as her entire body threatens to slide down the wall. When she stops contracting around his fingers, he helps her shed her dress and moves them deeper inside the kitchen, the industrial-like lighting hiding absolutely nothing.

His eyes take in her garments, black with purple details. She’s noticing how he reacts to her in different colors; anything but green seems to get a reaction out of him. She realizes green is something else for him, a burden and something dark, everything she is not.

His hands try to pull down her underwear, but it gets caught in the garter; he pauses to consider his options for a second or two, and she pauses him as he’s about to tear the fabric. “We’ve talked about this,” she reminds him. “And I swear, if the next words out of your mouth are ‘I’ll buy you new ones’ you will be sleeping on the couch.” It’s an empty threat, but it does the trick.

Her hands reach down to undo the garter clips, lets him pull her underwear down until he’s on his knees in front of her; they get caught on her shoes, so she turns around to brace herself on the kitchen counter as she steps out of the scrap of satin and lace, remembering his shoulder and not wanting to inflict any more pain on him.

The sensation of his lips against the inside of her thighs doesn’t exactly surprise her, but her knees still wobble. She puts her weight on her elbows, giving him more room to work with; his mouth closes over her sex the moment she does, tongue sliding deep inside her over and over and over until she’s panting. He doesn’t wait until she comes this time, just stands up and unzips his pants and then he’s filling her, his chin rubbing his scruff against her neck until all she can smell is herself and the faintness of his aftershave.

“Felicity,” he begs her, each syllable punctuated by a thrust. “Need you.”

“You’ve got me,” she tells him, reaching behind her to clasp her hand behind his neck. “You’ve got me.”

(She’s not tripping anymore.)


End file.
